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f  ul)lis6«a  611  the  itaJroflg  gnstitat*. 


DISCOURSE 


LIFE  AND  CHARACTER 


GEORGE  PEABODY 


By  SEVERN  TEACKLE  WALLIS. 


liCSB  LfBRARV 


DISCOURSE 


LIFE  AND  CHARACTER 


OF 


GEORGE  PEABODY, 


DELIVERED    IN 


the  hall  of  the  peabody  institute, 
Baltimore,  Februaey  18,  1870, 

At  the  Keqtjest  of  the  Trustees, 


By  SEVERN  TEACKLE  WALLIS, 

A  Member  of  the  Board. 


^nblisljeb  bjj  t^e  ^enbob^r  Institute. 


BALTIMORE: 

Printed  by  John  Murphy  &  Co. 
1870. 


Digitized  by  tine  Internet  Arciiive 

in  2007  witii  funding  from 

IVIicrosoft  Corporation 


littp://www.arcliive.org/details/discourseonlifecOOwalliala 


At  a  Meeting  of  the  Trustees  of  the  Peabody  Institute 
of  the  City  of  Baltimore,  held  on  the  6th  of  November, 
1869,  tlie  following  Preamble  and  Resolutions  were  adop- 
ted: 

Whereas,  The  telegraph  brought  to  us  yesterday  morning  the  sad 
tidings  that  our  good  friend  and  patron,  George  Peabody,  died  the  night 
before  —  at  eleven  o'clock  on  Thursday,  the  4th  of  November,  in  London 
—  where  he  had  recently  arrived  from  his  visit  to  this  country,  the  Trus- 
tees of  the  Institute  have  been  convened  to  take  a  record  of  this  event, 
and  to  direct  such  proceedings  as  shall  properly  express  the  profound 
sorrow  which  it  inspires,  and  render  suitable  honor  to  the  memory  of 
the  illustrious  founder  of  the  corporation  that  has  been  committed  to  their 
charge.     Therefore 

Resolved,  That  in  the  death  of  George  Peabody  the  civilized  world  has 
lost  one  of  its  most  generous  benefactors,  his  country  an  illustrious  citizen 
whose  active  benevolence  will  long  be  remembered  in  the  wise  and  noble 
institutions  which  he  has  planned  and  founded  for  the  good  of  the  nations, 
and  his  numerous  friends  on  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic  a  most  cherished 
companion,  whose  life  has  been  illustrated  and  adorned  by  the  constant 
practice  of  the  most  conspicuous  probity,  charity  and  good  will  to  man- 
kind. 

Resolved,  That  this  Board  have  received  the  intelligence  of  his  death 
with  an  emotion  rendered  more  poignant  by  their  experience  of  the 
benefits  they  have  enjoyed,  in  their  peculiar  personal  relations  to  him, 
as  a  friend  in  whose  intercourse  they  were  accustomed  to  find  a  kindly 


iv 


and  effective  co-operation  in  the  performance  of  the  duties  assigned  to 
them,  and  the  most  valuable  aid,  both  in  counsel  and  resources,  for  the 
advancement  of  the  design  of  the  Institute. 

Resolved,  That  in  token  of  respect  for  his  memory  the  Institute  be 
closed  until  Monday,  and  that  it  be  suitably  draped  with  badges  of 
mourning,  to  be  retained  one  month. 

Resolved,  That  the  Board  make  provision  for  a  suitable  eulogy  on  the 
life  and  character  of  the  deceased,  to  be  pronounced  in  the  Hall  of  the 
Institute  at  a  day  hereafter  to  be  determined,  of  which  notice  shall  be 
given  to  the  public. 

Resolved,  That  S.  Teackle  "Wallis,  Esq.  be  invited  to  deliver  the  eulogy 
on  the  life  and  character  of  Mr.  Peabody  provided  for  in  the  foregoing 
resolution. 

Resolved,  That  a  committee  of  three  be  appointed  by  the  Chair  to 
carry  the  above  resolutions  into  effect,  and  that  they  be  also  authorized 
to  co-operate  with  any  public  bodies,  in  the  city  or  State,  who  maj-  desire 
to  unite  with  the  Trustees  of  the  Peabody  Institute  in  paying  a  proper 
tribute  of  respect  to  the  memory  of  the  late  George  Peabody. 


DISCOURSE. 


ON  the  12th  of  February,  thirteen  years  ago, 
the  Founder  of  this  Institute  committed  to 
the  hands  of  his  selected  agents  the  noble 
gift,  which,  under  his  accumulating  bounty,  has 
since  swollen  to  more  than  four  times  its  original 
amount.  Upon  the  same  day,  year  after  year, 
the  Trustees  whom  he  so  honored  have  been  wont 
to  render  him  an  account  of .  their  stewardship, 
and  renew  to  him  the  expression  of  their  reverent 
affection  and  gratitude.  Some  months  after  our 
last  annual  address  to  him,  we  shared,  with  our 
fellow-citizens,  the  pleasure  of  seeing  him  again 
among  us  in  person,  full,  not  only  of  increasing 
sympathy  with  the  purposes  of  this  Foundation, 
but  of  abounding  munificence  to  serve  them. 
Although  the  hand  of  disease  was  then  heavy 
upon  him,  there  was,  Ave  thought,  reason  for  the 
hope  that  he  might  be  spared  for  many  years, 
to  see  the  growth  of  the  good  seed  which  he  had 
2 


10 

planted  in  so  many  places.  We  especially  looked 
forward  to  the  return  of  our  anniversary,  that  we 
might  testify,  by  some  public  and  appropriate 
recognition,  our  sense  of  his  untiring  bounty  and 
his  cordial  personal  confidence  and  kindness. — 
But  —  blessed  as  his  work  on  earth  was,  it  had 
been  accomplished,  and  a  higher  reward  was  near 
him  than  even  an  old  age,  beloved  of  God  and 
man.  We  shall  never  look  upon  his  kindly  face 
again,  nor  shall  his  lips  speak  charity  and  wisdom, 
any  more,  to  us.  The  thousands  of  little  children 
who  were  gathered  round  him,  as  about  a  father's 
knees,  when  he  graced  the  dedication  of  this  build- 
ing with  his  presence,  will  tell  to  their  own  chil- 
dren how  the  eyes  of  the  good  man  filled  and  his 
kind  voice  faltered,  as  he  uttered  the  last  touching 
and  tender  words  of  counsel,  which  were  among 
his  worthiest  gifts  to  them.  But  his  venerable 
form  they  must  remember,  now,  among  the  plea- 
sant visions  of  childhood,  which  fleeted  away  too 
soon.  He  is  of  the  past,  to  them  as  to  us,  and 
though  public  sorrow  and  private  affection  may 
mourn  over  his  departure,  there  is  surely  no  one 
to  repine  at  the  thought,  that  he  has  passed  over 
the  great  gulf,  fixed,  of  old  time,  between  the 
rich  man  and  Abraham's  bosom. 


11 

I  am  here,  upon  the  invitation  of  my  associates 
in  the  Trust  which  Mr.  Peabody  created  in  Bal- 
timore, to  say  something  of  his  life  and  character. 
We  had  selected,  as  an  appropriate  occasion,  the 
anniversary  to  which  I  have  alluded.  The  change 
which  brings  us  together  to-day,  instead,  not  only 
gives  us  the  pleasure  of  welcoming  friends  and 
co-laborers  from  a  distance,  who  could  not  other- 
wise have  joined  us  in  these  offices,  but  enables 
us,  "with  double  pomp  of  sadness,"  on  the  birth- 
day of  our  Founder,  to  lay  our  tribute  on  his 
tomb.  I  regret,  unaffectedly,  that  the  duty  which 
has  been  assigned  to  me  was  not  committed,  as 
I  wished,  to  other  hands,  for  there  are  those 
among  my  brethren,  far  better  fitted  to  perform 
it,  whose  age  and  long  and  intimate  acquaintance 
with  Mr.  Peabody  would  have  given  to  eulogy 
the  weight  and  the  force  of  personal  knowledge 
and  testimony.  Except,  however,  as  an  expres- 
sion of  our  own  and  the  public  feeling  and  the 
doing  of  a  duty  as  well  as  a  labor  of  love,  it 
would  seem  almost  idle  for  the  best  of  us  to  say 
a  word,  at  this  moment.  The  press  of  the  civi- 
lized w^orld  has  already  exhausted  on  the  subject 
all  the  acuteness  of  analysis  and  all  the  fulness 
of  appreciation    and   sympathy.      Eloquence   has 


12 

poured  out  upon  it  the  whole  wealth  of  pathos 
and  illustration.  Even  governments  •  have  found 
heart  in  it  for  tenderness  and  reverence,  and 

"Nations  swell  the  funeral  cry." 

In  the  annals  of  our  race,  there  is  no  record 
of  funeral  honors,  to  an  uncrowned  man,  such 
as  have  been  rendered  to  George  Peabody.  The 
story  which  comes  nearest  to  what  we  have  beheld, 
is  told  by  the  grandest  historian  of  Rome  and 
is  lighted  by  the  finest  touches  of  his  genius. 
It  follows  the  widow  of  Germanicus,  across  the 
wintry  seas,  as  she  bore,  from  Antioch  to  Rome, 
the  ashes  of  her  hero.  We  can  almost  see  the 
people  crowding  to  the  walls  and  house-tops,  and 
thronging  the  sea-coast,  as  with  slow  oars  the 
silent  galleys  came.  The  voice  of  lamentation 
seems  to  echo  round  us,  as  it  rose  from  all  the 
multitude,  when  Agrippina  landed  with  her  pre- 
cious burden,  and  her  sobbing  children  followed. 
The  urn  is  borne  to  the  Imperial  City  on  the 
shoulders  of  centurions  and  tribunes.  Crowds 
hasten  from  afar  and  weep,  in  mourning  gar- 
ments, by  the  road-sides.  Funereal  altars  smoke 
with  victims  as  the  sad  array  goes  by,  and  spices 
and  perfumes  and  costly  raiment  are  flung  into 


13 

the  flames  as  offerings.  The  City  streets — now 
still  as  death,  now  loud  with  bursting  sorrow — 
are  thronged  with  Rome's  whole  people,  and 
when,  at  last,  the  ashes  are  at  rest  in  the  Au- 
gustan Mausoleum,  a  wail  goes  up,  such  as  before 
had  never  swept  along  those  marble  ways.  The 
tale  which  Tacitus  has  told  us  of  these  splendid 
obsequies,  comes  to  us,  with  redoubled  grandeur, 
through  "the  corridors  of  time,"  and  yet  its  inci- 
dents are  almost  tame  to  what  ourselves  have  wit- 
nessed. The  stately  ship  which  bore,  across  the 
waves,  the  corpse  of  him  we  honor,  is  a  marvel 
that  Rome  never  dreamed  of — the  proudest  con- 
voy that  ever  guarded  human  ashes.  The  ocean 
which  she  traversed  is  an  empire,  over  which  the 
eagles  of  Germanicus  knew  no  dominion.  The 
mighty  engines  and  instruments  of  war,  which 
welcomed  her,  were  far  beyond  the  prophecy  of 
oracle  or  thought  of  Sybil.  Beside  the  unseen 
power  which  dragged  the  funeral -car  and  cleft  the 
waters,  with  its  burden,  in  mastery  of  the  winds, 
the  might  of  legions  is  simple  insignificance,  and 
it  seems  like  trifling  to  tell  of  galleys,  centurions 
and  tribunes.  N'or  is  there,  in  the  mourning  of 
the  populace  of  Rome  over  one  of  its  broken 
idols,  a  type  even  of  the  noble  sorrow  which  has 


14 

united  men  of  all  nations  and  opinions  in  their 
tribute  to  our  lamented  dead.  And  who  shall 
speak  of  Heathen  temple  or  Imperial  tomb,  in 
the  same  breath  with  the  great  Abbey  Minster, 
where  he  slept  awhile,  amid  the  monuments  and 
memories  of  statesmen  and  warriors,  philosophers 
and  poets,  philanthropists  and  kings  —  where 
more  of  the  dust  of  what  was  genius  and  great- 
ness is  gathered,  than  ever  lay  under  roof  or 
stone  ?  There  is  something  which  almost  bewil- 
ders the  imagination,  in  the  thought,  that  on  the 
day  and  at  the  hour  when  our  own  bells  were 
tolling  his  death-knell  and  people  stopped  to 
listen,  in  the  streets,  the  requiem  of  the  Danvers 
boy  was  pealing  through  aisle  and  cloister,  thou- 
sands of  miles  away,  where  funeral  song  had 
rung  and  censers  smoked,  whole  centuries  before 
men  knew  the  Continent  which  was  his  birth- 
place. It  seems  as  if  the  dirge  of  to-day  were  a 
reverberation  from  the  ages  And  when  we 
reflect  how  simple  the  career  was,  which  closed 
amid  all  these  honors :  how  little  their  subject 
had  to  do  with  the  things  which  commonly  stir 
men's  bosoms  and  win  the  shouts  of  wonder  and 
applause,  in  life  or  after  it :  that  he  was  not 
great,  as  men  judge  greatness :   that  every  badge 


15 

and  trophy  of  his  exceeding  triumph  was  won 
by  an  unconscious  and  an  unstained  hand :  I 
confess  it  seems  to  me  that  the  grand,  sponta- 
neous tributes  which  have  been  paid  to  him,  have 
beggared  the  resources,  while  they  have  filled  the 
measure,  of  panegyric. 

We  are  not  required  to  forget,  nor  do  we  dispar- 
age the  living  or  the  dead  by  remembering,  that 
something  of  this  may  be  due  to  the  peculiar 
relations  existing,  at  the  moment,  between  the 
countries  which  divided  Mr.  Peabody's  bounty 
and  aifections.  A  becoming  spirit  of  manly  con- 
ciliation, on  the  one  side,  and  an  equally  becoming 
temper  and  pride  of  nationality,  upon  the  other, 
have  no  doubt  had  their  share  in  these  unprece- 
dented demonstrations.  But  there  is  nothing,  in 
this,  which  detracts  from  the  sincerity  or  impairs 
the  significance  of  the  homage  that  either  has  ren- 
dered. It  is  a  new  epoch  in  the  history  of  gov- 
ernments, when  the  cavils  of  diplomacy  and  the 
mutterings  of  discord  are  hushed,  even  for  an 
hour,  by  the  spell  of  a  good  man's  memory,  and 
it  were  folly  to  dispute  his  place  among  his  kind, 
whose  death  so  touched  the  hearts  of  two  great 
nations,  that  either  could  call  unto  the  other  to 
join  hands  with  it  across  his  grave. 


16 

But  while  these  things,  as  I  have  said,  appear 
to  render  eulogy  idle,  they  are  equally  potent,  in 
making  just  appreciation  difficult.  Through  so 
much  that  dazzles,  it  is  not  easy  to  look,  steadily 
and  calmly,  at  the  simple  life  and  story  which 
had  so  bright  an  ending.  The  quiet,  systematic 
habits,  the  delving  industry,  the  thrifty  shrewd- 
ness and  world- wisdom,  the  unsentimental  benevo- 
lence, of  the  plain,  practical  merchant  and  banker, 
who  walked  among  us,  like  others  in  his  calling, 
are  hard  to  deal  with,  fairly,  at  this  epic  stage  of 
his  renown.  It  seems  like  belittling  the  subject 
to  consider  it  in  the  mere  light  of  its  realities. 
Indeed  it  requires  an  effort,  at  such  a  time,  for 
the  coldest  thinker  to  divest  himself  of  that  enthu- 
siasm, whose  natural  expression  is  extravagance, 
and  nothing  but  a  sense  of  the  great  wrong  which 
exaggeration  would  do^  to  a  memory  so  far  above 
it,  could  persuade  a  man  of  ordinary  impulse  that 
it  is  proper  to  moderate  his  words.  Nor  is  it 
only  the  contagion  of  the  hour  of  homage  which 
it  is  difficult  to  escape.  There  is  something 
splendid  and  attractive  in  generosity,  in  all  its 
forms,  and  when  its  scope  embraces  the  larger 
needs  of  humanity,  and  its  resources  are  almost 
as    ample   as    its    scope,    it   carries    feeling    and 


17 

imagination  away  captive.  We  surround  the 
life  and  the  memory  of  the  "  cheerful  giver " 
with  a  halo  such  as  glitters  only  around  conse- 
crated heads.  The  wonder  of  the  crowd  is  almost 
worship,  and  men  deem  it  half  a  sacrilege  to 
seek,  in  merely  human  qualities,  "the  conjura- 
tion and  the  mighty  magic  "  which  seem  so  far 
beyond  humanity.  And  yet,  to  do  this  only,  is 
our  duty  here  to-day.  We  have  come  to  recog- 
nize and  study,  in  the  common  light,  the  traits 
of  the  man  and  citizen,  George  Peabody ;  to 
consider  and  teach,  if  we  can,  the  moral  of  his 
simple,  unheroic  life.  We  are  to  look  at  him, 
as  he  moved  and  had  his  daily  being, — as  if  his 
features  did  not  live  in  bronze  and  no  minute- 
gun  had  ever  told  his  burial  to  the  sea.  Nay, 
it  is  our  business  to  take  from  the  record  of  his 
career  all  that  tends  to  impair  and  falsify  its 
lesson,  by  making  men  despair  of  rising  to  his 
level.  Here,  above  all  other  places;  with  the 
sound  of  his  own  sturdy  teachings  scarce  dull 
upon  our  ears ;  with  his  simplicity  and  modesty — 
his  good  fellowship  and  plain  dealing  —  fresh  in 
our  remembrance  and  affection ;  with  all  things 
round  about  us  full  of  what  he  was  and  of  all 
he  claimed  or  cared  to  be;  we  should  insult  his 
3 


i8 

memory,  by  attempting  to  add  an  inch  to  his 
stature.  And  indeed  there  is  small  need  of  fancy, 
in  dealing  with  his  story,  for  scarce  ^anything 
in  fiction  is  more  strange  than  the  actual  prose 
of  it.  The  child  of  poor  parents  and  humble 
hopes  —  a  grocer's  boy  at  eleven,  the  assistant 
of  a  country  shop-keeper  at  sixteen  —  he  had 
reached  but  middle-life  when  he  was  able  so  to 
deal  with  the  resources  of  the  great  money- centre 
of  the  world,  as  to  prop,  with  his  integrity  and 
credit,  the  financial  decadence  of  whole  common- 
wealths. Pausing  even  at  that  point  of  his  career 
—  a  period  to  which  in  Maryland  our  gratitude 
so  frequently  recurs  —  is  it  not  more  wonderful 
than  the  legend  which  delighted  our  childhood, 
the  tale  of  Whittington,  citizen  and  mercer,  thrice 
Lord  Mayor  of  London?  Was  it  not  quite  as  easy, 
beforehand,  for  our  stripling  to  imagine  that  he 
heard,  across  the  waters,  an  invitation  from  Bow 
Bells  to  him,  as  to  conceive  that  his  statue  would 
be  raised,  in  London  streets,  while  yet  he  lived, 
and  be  unveiled,  with  words  of  reverence  and 
honor,  by  the  heir-apparent  of  that  mighty  empire, 
surrounded  by  its  best  and  noblest  ?  Add  to  this 
what  I  have  before  described,  and  it  seems  as  if 
another  night  had  been  added  to  the  Thousand 
and  One. 


19 

But,  as  I  have  said,  our  business  is  not  with 
the  wonders.  It  is  with  the  mind,  the  heart,  the 
will,  the  character  which  wrought  them.  These 
were  the  only  genii  of  this  story.  They,  and  they 
only,  did  what  was  done,  and  neither  ring  nor 
lamp  had  any  part  in  it.  "  No  man,"  Oarlyle 
tells  us,  "  becomes  a  saint  in  his  sleep,"  and  there 
is  no  greater  fallacy  than  the  popular  notion 
which  so  often  attributes  success,  in  great  things, 
to  luck.  There  are  people,  it  is  true,  who  stumble 
into  prosperity  and  get  place  and  power,  by  what, 
to  mortal  e^'^e,  seems  chance.  Reputation  and  the 
honors  and  profits  which  follow  it  are  now  and 
then  wafted  to  a  man,  like  thistle-down,  for  no 
better  visible  reason  than  that  he  happens  to  be 
out  in  the  same  wind  with  them.  The  crowd 
attach  themselves,  often,  and  cling,  with  devotion, 
to  some  singularly  favored  person,  as  burrs  do  to 
his  clothing,  simply,  as  it  would  appear,  because 
he  walks  among  them.  But  what  seems  does  not 
necessarily  represent  what  is,  and  a  man  must  be 
hard  to  convince,  if,  after  having  used  a  micro- 
scope once,  he  be  not  satisfied,  for  life,  that  things 
exist  and  are  comprehensible  though  he  may 
neither  see  nor  understand  them  himself.  What 
therefore  may  appear  to  be  exceptions  to  the 
general   truth,   that  great  results   do   not  spring 


from  insufficient  causes,  are  commonly  found  to 
be  strictly  within  it.  In  the  course  of  any  long 
life-time,  the  logic  of  cause  and  effect  is  apt  to 
vindicate  itself.  In  this  busy,  stirring,  jostling, 
interested  modern  society  of  ours,  where  scarcely 
any  one  occupies  a  pedestal — or  even  an  humbler 
place — but  some  one  else  goes  anxiously  to  work 
to  dislodge  him  and  get  there  in  his  stead,  we 
seldom  find  respect  or  deference,  love  or  admira- 
tion, long  yielded  to  a  brother,  unless  there  be 
that  in  him  which  commands  them.  The  world 
may  dally  with  its  impostors  and  its  charlatans 
—  its  trumpery  great  men,  sham  heroes  and  mock 
saints  and  sages  —  for  a  little  while,  but  they 
finally  go  down,  for  the  most  part,  into  the  recep- 
tacle—  the  huge  Noah's  Ark  —  of  its  spurned  and 
worthless  playthings.  The  winds  of  time  and 
contest  blow  away  the  chaff,  at  last,  from  the 
great  grain-floor  of  humanity  —  a  blessed  fact,  by 
the  by,  which  reconciles  us  to  many  tempests. 
Hemisphere  does  not  cry  aloud  to  hemisphere 
about  common  people.  Nations  do  not  mourn 
over  men  who  deserve  no  tears.  There  was  then 
something  in  George  Peabody,  or  about  him, 
that  called  for  the  homage  which  has  been  ren- 
dered him.     What  was  it? 


21 

Not  his  intellect,  certainly  —  for,  neither  in 
capacity  nor  cultivation,  was  he  above  the  grade 
of  thousands  of  clever  men,  both  here  and  in 
England,  in  his  own  and  kindred  callings.  He 
had  not  genius  to  dazzle,  or  invention  to  create. 
He  had  made  no  discovery  in  science,  or  even  in 
finance.  He  knew  little  of  art,  and  had  contri- 
buted nothing  to  the  stock  of  what  is  denominated 
"human  knowledge."  Statesman  he  was  not — 
nay,  not  even  politician.  He  had  never  worn 
spur  on  battle-field :  had  never  filled  ofiice,  or 
wielded  power,  or  sought  to  be  any  man's  master 
but  his  own.  There  was  not,  I  repeat,  a  single 
element  in  him  or  circumstance  in  his  career,  of 
those  which  enter  into  the  common  estimate  of 
greatness.  Neither  did  riches  win  his  name  for 
him.  He  was  no  monopolist^,  no  miracle,  of 
wealth :  for  enormous  private  fortunes  are  now 
constantly  acquired,  in  half  such  a  life-time  as 
his,  and  the  great  marts  of  the  world  have  men, 
far  richer  than  he,  whose  accumulations  have 
been  gathered  just  as  honestly,  just  as  fortu- 
nately, and  with  quite  as  much  sagacity  as  his. 
Nor  does  he  stand  alone  in  the  appropriation  of 
large  means  to  the  good  of  mankind.  The  num- 
ber of  rich  men  whose  testaments  dispense  the 


22 

hoards  of  a  lifetime,  in  works  of  usefulness,  is 
very  large.  The  past  has  left  us  many  well- 
known  and  abiding  monuments  of  such  benefi- 
cence. True,  there  is  a  smack  of  death-bed 
repentance,  as  well  as  bounty,  in  these  gifts ;  a 
confession,  at  best,  of  intentions  good  but  reluc- 
tant and  long  smothered  by  human  infirmity. 
We  cannot  help  feeling  that  they  sometimes  are, 
very  much,  in  kind  and  motive,  like  the  oholus 
which  used  to  be  placed  between  the  lips  of  the 
dead,  to  pay  for  their  safe  ferrying  across  the 
infernal  waters.  But  still,  they  clothe  the  naked, 
feed  the  hungry,  comfort  the  sick,  educate  the 
poor — relieve,  in  all  sorts  of  ways,  the  necessities 
and  afflictions  of  humanity — and  those  who  dis- 
pense them  deserve  well  of  their  race.  Though 
the  good  works  which  "blossom  in  their  dust," 
might  have  yielded  more  fragrance  under  the 
culture  of  their  hands,  they  are  good  works  not- 
withstanding, and  should  be  remembered  with 
charity  not  less  than  gratitude — as  they  com- 
monly are.  But  the  liberality  of  rich  men  is  not 
always  posthumous,  and  in  the  mere  fact  of 
giving  and  giving  largely,  in  his  life-time,  Mr. 
Peabody  was  by  no  means  singular.  The  world 
is  full,  I  was  going  to  say — though  that  perhaps 


23 

is  stating  the  case  too  strongly  —  of  people  who 
habitually  give.  They  certainly  are  no  rarity  in 
it.  Most  of  us  give  freely,  to  those  we  love  —  to 
our  own  flesh  and  blood,  at  all  events.  They  who 
do  not,  belong,  I  think,  to  the  class  whom  Burns 
characterizes  as  "the  real  hardened  wicked,"  and 
it  is  wholesome  to  persuade  ourselves  that  they 
are  likewise  "to  a  few  restricked."  When  Thack- 
eray says,  somewhere,  that  he  never  saw  a  fine 
boy,  but  he  felt  like  giving  him  a  guinea,  he  does 
not,  I  am  sure,  exaggerate  the  natural  impulse  of 
every  healthy  and  manly  heart.  There  are  many, 
to  whom  this  sort  of  impulse  is  a  general,  spon- 
taneous and  often  fatal  rule  of  life.  Some  indeed 
—  and  a  large  class, —  give  because  they  cannot 
help  it.  Giving,  with  them,  is  almost  a  pleasure 
of  sense.  It  is  the  natural  expression  of  a  feel- 
ing —  as  weeping  and  sighing  are  with  others. 
It  is  at  once  the  voice  and  the  tear  of  their 
sympathy.  The  heart  sends  its  quickened  pulsa- 
tion directly  to  the  hand,  which  only  fetters  could 
keep  from  the  purse-strings.  And  this,  too  fre- 
quently, without  check  of  prudence,  or  choice  of 
object,  or  thought  of  to-morrow.  We  are  apt  to 
admire  and  indeed  to  love  these  people;  for,  to  the 
common  apprehension,  the  pleasure  and  advantage 


24 

of  keeping  money  are  so  striking,  that  to  part  with 
it,  freely,  passes  for  a  sacrifice.  And  yet,  obvi- 
ously, they  may  be  just  as  self-indulgent,  in  their 
way,  as  their  next-door  neighbor,  whose  heart  is 
always  in  his  burglar-proof  safe  and  his  hand 
never,  except  to  increase  or  count  his  store.  It 
may  be  their  pleasure  to  scatter,  as  it  is  his  to 
save,  and  they  may  consult  nothing  better  than 
their  pleasure,  as  he  pursues  nothing  better  than 
his.  Sir  Thomas  Browne  calls  their's  "but  moral 
charity,  and  an  act  that  oweth  more  to  passion 
than  reason."  And  he  adds,  in  the  same  strain, 
that  "  He  who  relieves  another,  upon  the  bare 
suggestion  and  bowels  of  pity,  doth  not  this  so 
much  for  his  sake,  as  for  his  own,  for,  by  com- 
passion, we  make  other's  misery  our  own,  and 
so,  by  relieving  them,  we  relieve  ourselves  also." 
Happily,  the  common  heart  is  not  quite  so  inge- 
nious or  so  analytical  as  this,  but  contents  itself 
with  feeling,  that  though  the  bountiful  and  the 
miser  may  be  selfish,  in  their  several  ways,  the 
one  selfishness  is  still  a  better  thing  than  the 
other.  Indeed  there  is  almost  always  something, 
in- these  heedless  natures,  which  redeems  the  sin 
of  their  improvidence  and  self-indulgence,  and 
although,    when    waste    makes    want,    they   have 


25 

often  to  eat  husks  in  sorrow,  and  wait  on  those 
who  are  to  them  but  swine,  we  cannot  help  think- 
ing, sometimes,  that  they  belong  to  that  class  of 
prodigals  for  whom  a  fatted  calf  will  be  killed, 
one  day,  when  they  will  eat  and  drink,  and  be 
as  merry  as  the  hundreds  they  have  fed  in  their 
time.  To  this  kind  of  givers,  our  experience  must 
add  that  other  and  familiar  class,  who  part  with 
money  readily,  because  they  are  incapacitated,  by 
nature,  from  feeling  its  value.  I  say  feeling  — 
because  the  processes  of  the  heart  are  so  much 
quicker  than  those  of  the  head,  that  it  profits  a 
man  very  little,  in  these  matters,  only  to  under- 
stand and  know.  The  battle  is  generally  lost, 
in  such  case,  before  the  reserves  come  up.  But 
how  many  people,  especially  women,  are  we 
not  acquainted  with  —  every  one  of  us  here, — 
whose  whole  existence  is  a  mission  of  benefi- 
cence; who  know  and  feel  the  worth  of  money 
and  yet  spend  it,  on  others,  without  stint;  with 
whom  the  poor,  as  Beranger  has  it,  are  harves- 
ters, not  gleaners;  whose  hands  are  as  open  as 
the  prodigal's  and  yet  never  waste;  in  whom  the 
love  of  giving  is  so  chastened  by  the  love  of  the 
Great  Giver,  that  they  dispense  their  bounty  as 
His  alms,  and  make  of  charity  a  very  worship? 
4 


26 

These  however  are  the  silent  and  humble  Sama- 
ritans of  the  highways  and  by-ways,  who,  for  the 
most  part,  are  only  followed  by  individual  grati- 
tude or  personal  aifection.  They  do  not  amass  for- 
tunes, or  make  testaments,  or  have  statues  erected 
to  them.  The  great  world  knows  little  about  them 
and,  as  a  whole,  cares  little,  for  though  they  are 
no  trifling  element  in  its  economy,  they  seem  so,  to 
the  thoughtless,  in  the  broad  scope  of  an  economy 
so  large. 

If  I  am  right  then  in  supposing  that  the  secret 
of  Mr.  Peabody's  fame  is  not  to  be  found  in  the 
mere  fact  of  his  having  given,  and  given  freely, 
in  his  life-time,  to  good  objects,  where  else  are 
we  to  look  for  it?  Not,  surely,  in  the  magnitude 
of  his  benefactions.  It  were  shame  to  judge  him 
by  a  standard  so  vulgar  and  unworthy.  It  would 
not  only  be  to  scandalize  his  memory,  but  to  throw 
away  the  whole  moral  and  lesson  of  his  life.  The 
homage  which  is  rendered  to  the  givers  of  great 
gifts,  merely  because  their  gifts  are  great,  is  but 
parcel  of  that  deification  and  worship  of  wealth, 
which  is  the  opprobrium  of  our  times.  When 
this  comes  in  the  shape  of  a  tribute  to  the  dead, 
it  is,  of  course,  comparatively  free  from  the  perso- 
nal servility,  the  self-abasing  deference,  the  mean 


27 

genuflections,  which  pay  court  to  the  living  rich. 
But  it  is  the  same  ignoble  thing,  in  its  motive 
and  essence,  though  the  sables  be  wrapped  around 
it  and  what  men  knelt  to  before  may  have  become 
as  the  dust  in  which  they  knelt.  And  just  as 
royalty,  succeeding,  is  studious  and  exigent  of 
pomp  and  splendor,  in  the  obsequies  of  royalty 
dead,  so,  and  for  the  same  reason,  wealth,  surviv- 
ing, exaggerates  the  dignity  of  wealth  departed, 
and  those  who  adore  and  would  propitiate  the 
one,  crowd  to  canonize  and  glorify  the  other. 
To  deal  in  such  a  spirit  with  the  man  whose 
birth-day  we  commemorate,  would  be  to  degrade 
ourselves  and  crush  him,  basely,  like  Tarpeia, 
with  the  weight  of  his  own  gold.  It  is  the  very 
fact  that  a  million  more  or  a  million  less  would 
have  counted  but  as  a  farthing,  either  way,  in 
the  just  estimate  of  his  purposes  and  character, 
which  makes  the  rare  nobility  and  worth  of  his 
example.  Without  the  millions  we  might  perhaps 
have  had  less  of  the  pageant,  but  we  should  have 
had  none  the  less  of  the  man.  Eleven  years 
ago,  it  came  within  the  province  of  the  present 
speaker,  on  a  public  and  interesting  occasion,  to 
illustrate  the  theme  before  him  by  an  allusion  to 
Mr.  Peabody,  who  had  then  taken  but  the  earii- 


'  28 

est  steps  in  the  career  of  his  open  beneficence. 
You  will  pardon,  I  hope,  the  repetition  of  what 
was  then  said,  because  it  puts  in  a  few  words 
precisely  the  idea  which  I  desire,  at  this  moment, 
to  express,  and  having  been  wTitten  in  advance 
of  the  later  and  more  famous  charities  of  our 
Founder,  it  will  show  that  those  who  knew  and 
respected  him,  then,  esteemed  the  source  from 
which  his  good  deeds  sprang,  far  more  for  itself 
than  for  its  fruits.  The  language  then  used,  was 
the  following: 

"When  I  see  a  man  like  George  Peabody  —  a 
man  of  plain  intellect  and  moderate  education  — 
who  is  willing  to  take  away  from  the  acquisitions 
of  successful  trade,  what  would  make  the  fortunes 
of  a  hundred  men  of  reasonable  desires,  and  dedi- 
cate it  to  the  advancement  of  knowledge  and  the 
cultivation  of  refining  and  liberal  pursuits  and 
tastes,  among  a  people  with  whom  he  has  ceased 
to  dwell,  except  in  the  recollections  of  early  indus- 
try and  struggle — I  recognize  a  spirit  which  tends 
to  make  men  satisfied  with  the  inequalities  of  for- 
tune —  which  is  alive  to  the  true  ends  and  pur- 
poses of  labor  —  which  gives  as  well  as  takes  — 
which  sees,  in  the  very  trophies  of  success,  the 
high  incumbent  duties  and  the  noble  pleasure  of 


29 

a  stewardship  for  others.  And  yet,  one  such  man 
—  in  himself — in  his  life  and  the  example  which 
it  gives  —  is  worth  tenfold  more  to  a  community, 
than  all  the  beneficence  of  which  his  heart  may 
make  him  prodigal." 

Feeling  and  believing  this,  I  should  be  false  to 
my  own  conception  of  the  honorable  duty  assigned 
to  me,  if  I  did  not  protest  against  regarding  what 
is  called  the  "  princeliness "  of  Mr.  Peabody's 
munificence,  as  other  than  an  element  entirely 
subordinate,  in  any  just  and  manly  appreciation 
of  his  character.  And  indeed,  after  all,  I  must 
own  that  the  large  bounty  of  ordinary  rich  men 
does  not  impress  me,  always,  as  it  seems  to  strike 
many  others.  Liberality  is  a  relative  thing,  and, 
obviously,  what  is  generous  and  whole-souled,  in 
one  person,  viewed  in  its  relation  to  his  means 
and  his  own  wants,  may,  in  the  same  relation,  be 
niggardly  or  narrow,  in  another.  The  good  that 
giving  does  may  be  the  test  of  its  value,  but  cer- 
tainly is  not  of  its  merit.  That  is  best  determined, 
humanly  speaking,  by  what  it  costs  the  giver  to 
give.  I  do  not  mean  what  it  ought  not  to  cost  — 
the  agony  which  miserly  reluctance  suffers,  in 
parting  with  a  fragment  of  its  hoard,  under  the 
torture  of   entreaty   or    the   dread  of   shame   or 


30 

death  —  but  that  cheerful,  conscious  and  deliber- 
ate self-sacrifice,  which  renders  the  mite  of  the 
widow  more  precious,  a  thousand  fold,  than  the 
gold,  and  frankincense,  and  myrrh  of  the  Magi. 
I  speak  of  self-sacrifice,  for  (with  a  single  and 
melancholy  qualification  which  I  shall  presently 
consider)  it  is  hard  to  understand  how  there  can 
be  much  merit  in  the  simple  act  of  giving  to 
others  what  we  do  not  ourselves  need.  On  the 
contrary,  it  is  difficult  to  conceive  what  greater 
pleasure  a  rich  man  could  possibly  have  in  his 
wealth,  than  that  of  pouring  out  its  superabun- 
dance, in  works  of  kindliness  and  charity.  It  is 
not  meant  by  this  to  set  up  a  very  high  standard. 
I  am  not  talking  of  disciples,  who  are  to  part 
with  all  that  they  possess  and  follow  their  Master. 
It  is  not  a  question  of  surrendering  one  single 
reasonable,  or  even  luxurious,  personal  gratifica- 
tion. I  speak  of  superabundance  merely  —  of 
that  which  is  over  and  above  what  the  owner, 
in  any  reasonable  wa}'^,  can  expend  upon  himself, 
his  comforts,  his  tastes,  his  luxuries,  nay,  if  you 
please,  the  vices  of  his  station.  But  —  all  these 
things  reserved  and  cared  for  —  and  treating  the 
disposition  of  the  surplus  as  a  selfish  gratifica- 
tion merely,  and  as  nothing  higher  or  better,  it 


31 

seems,  I  repeat,  incomprehensible  to  a  genial  — 
I  need  not  say  a  generous  —  nature,  that  a  man 
can  possibly  get  greater  happiness  out  of  it,  than 
must  come  from  dispensing  it  in  kindness.  Gon- 
zalo  De  Cordova,  of  Spain,  the  Great  Captain,  was 
one  of  those  who  held  this  faith.  "  Never  stint 
your  hand" — he  said  to  his  steward — "there  is 
no  mode  of  enjoying  one's  property  like  giving  it 
away."  It  is  true  the  illustrious  soldier  may  have 
occasionally  treated  as  his  property  what  did  not 
precisely  belong  to  him,  but  his  preaching  was 
none  the  worse  for  this,  because  his  practice,  with 
his  own,  came  nobly  up  to  it.  Going  a  little 
more  deeply  too  into  the  vanities  as  well  as  the 
virtues  which  this  discussion  involves.  Lord  Lyt- 
ton  says,  with  great  point,  in  one  of  his  more 
serious  works,  that  "Charity  is  a  feeling  dear  to 
the  pride  of  the  human  heart.  It  is  an  aristo- 
cratic emotion  .  .  .  the  easiest  virtue  to  practice." 
There  is  no  doubt  that  in  the  sense  in  which  he 
speaks  of  charity,  the  observation  is  as  just  as  it 
is  clever.  If  a  rich  man  covets  respect  and  influ- 
ence :  if  he  desires  to  attract  sympathy  and  hear 
himself  praised:  to  be  looked  up  to,  flattered,  fol- 
lowed and  caressed  in  life,  and  have  an  epitaph, 
after   it,  like  a  player's  good  report  —  deserving 


32 

none  of  these  things,  the  while  —  there  is  no 
cheaper  or  more  certain  means  of  securing  them 
all,  than  a  few  judicious  investments  of  his  abun- 
dance in  what  ought  to  be  charity.  When  he 
purchases,  at  the  same  time,  by  the  same  outlay, 
the  pleasure  of  doing  good  and  the  incense  of 
gratitude,  one  cannot  feel  that  the  cross  which 
he  has  taken  up  is  a  very  heavy  one,  or  that 
he  walks  upon  celestial  heights  above  the  hearts 
of  common  men. 

If  I  am  right  then,  in  assuming  that  the  lesson 
of  our  Founder's  life  lies  not  in  that  he  gave,  or 
gave  before  he  died,  or  gave  superbly — nor,  indeed 
in  all  these  things  combined  —  what  is  there  left 
that  teaches  it?  We  must  turn  back  upon  the 
life  itself,  to  give  us  answer. 

Mr.  Peabody  was  not  a  man  of  gushing  sensi- 
bilities, nor  did  he  belong,  in  any  sense,  to  that 
class  who  are  free  with  money  because  they  do 
not  know  or  feel  its  value.  Indeed  there  were 
few  of  his  contemporaries,  in  whom  this  latter 
element  of  generosity  was  less  developed.  He 
knew  all  about  money,  and  valued  it  at  its  full, 
current  worth.  He  knew  it,  as  a  man  knows  a 
friend  and  ought  to  know  an  enemy.  That  his 
nature  was  genuinely  kind,   all   who   were   near 


33 

him  would  have  known  —  as  well  as  they  know 
it  now  —  if  he  had  died  a  bankrupt.  His  face, 
alone,  told  that  part  of  his  story,  for  his  smile 
was  of  the  sort  men  cannot  counterfeit  — 

"  His  eyes, 
An  outdoor  sign  of  all  the  good  within, 
Smiled  with  his  lips." 

But  his  sympathies,  nevertheless,  were  not 
coined,  at  sight  of  need,  into  money.  He  began 
life,  with  none  of  it  to  give,  or  even  to  keep. 
He  was  very  poor.  What  he  gained,  he  toiled 
for,  and  it  came  painfully  and  slowly.  He  said 
the  prayer  for  his  daily  bread,  as  we  are  told 
none  but  a  poor  man's  child  can  say  it,  and  he 
was  willing  to  do  anything  honest  and  manly  to 
turn  the  penny  that  he  needed.  Even  after  he 
had  been  established,  for  some  time,  in  the  Dis- 
trict of  Columbia,  and  his  prospects  had  very 
much  improved,  I  learn  from  a  venerable  friend, 
Mr.  Peabody's  senior,  (whose  memory,  like  the 
rest  of  his  fine  faculties,  appears  only  to  brighten 
with  age)  that  he  offered  to  forward  packages 
to  Baltimore  and  appealed  to  the  public  for  their 
patronage.  As  he  had  no  capital,  his  enterprise 
could  have  been  but  a  small  one,  probably  in- 
5 


34 

volving  nothing  but  his  personal  attention,  and 
I  allude  to  it,  merely  to  show  that  he  was  not 
only  content,  at  that  time,  but  anxious,  to  earn 
small  sums  in  a  small  way.  Naturally  too,  he 
was  no  doubt  equally  disposed  to  keep  what  he 
earned.  Overboard  at  sea  and  compelled  to  sink 
or  swim,  it  was  not  strange  that  he  should  feel 
the  importance  of  making  his  own  raft  seaworthy, 
before  he  pushed  away  a  plank  that  he  could  hold. 
Besides,  he  was  eminently  a  man  of  thrift.  He 
came  into  the  world  with  it,  and  he  drew  it  in 
from  the  atmosphere  into  which  he  was  born. 
He  liked  to  make,  and  to  save,  and  to  increase 
his  store,  and  he  liked  the  store  itself,  after  it 
was  increased  —  the  more  the  better.  Money- 
making  was  a  pleasure  to  him,  as  well  as  an 
instinct  of  his  nature.  Clearly,  these  circum- 
stances were  not  favorable  to  the  development, 
in  him,  of  Gonzalo  De  Cordova's  doctrine.  He 
was  a  man  of  the  busiest  industry  too,  and  had 
no  fancy  for  drones  —  thinking  possibly,  as  we 
are  all  apt  to  think,  when  prosperous,  or  when 
health  and  energy  and  strength  are  bounding  in 
us,  that  no  man  need  want  who  will  work. 
Besides,  he  was  full  of  system  and  fond  of 
detail,  two   mighty  curbs  upon   the  imagination. 


35 

Under  all  these  influences  he  pursued,  as  he 
began,  a  saving,  pains-taking,  careful  life,  and 
when  he  had  become  rich,  these  characteristics 
had  grown  with  his  fortune.  His  case  was  pre- 
cisely the  reverse  of  that  described  in  the  Cas- 
tilian  proverb,  which  says  —  "  The  money  of 
the  Sacristan  comes  singing  and  goes  singing." 
His  habits  therefore  continued,  as  they  always 
had  been,  simple  and  frugal.  His  desires  had 
not  grown  with  his  ability  to  indulge  them,  nor 
had  his  tastes.  Neither  had  the  pride  of  purse 
entered,  with  its  seven  other  devils,  into  his 
robust  and  downright  nature.  He  was  the  same 
man  that  he  had  alwaj'^s  been  —  only  richer. 
And  when  still  greater  wealth  came  to  him,  by 
the  rapid  processes  of  speculation,  it  had  no 
power  to  dazzle  him  or  make  him  giddy.  He 
looked  after  it,  invested  it  carefully  and  closely, 
increased  it  to  the  best  of  his  ability,  and  en- 
joyed, as  keenly  as  his  fellows,  the  pleasure 
which  these  processes  always  bring,  to  men  who 
deal  in  money,  and  have  that  knack  of  handling 
it,  to  profit,  which  is  born  in  some,  like  poetry, 
but  cannot  be  learned.  Xor  was  he  at  all 
ashamed,  so  long  as  he  remained  in  business, 
to  promote  its  success   by  all   honorable   means. 


36 

On  the  contrary,  he  took  pains  to  do  this.  He 
was  glad  to  make  friends,  and  to  see  them  grow 
into  customers.  He  was  as  thrifty  in  fine  —  as 
decided  and  constant  in  his  business-purposes,  and 
as  close  and  systematic  in  promoting  them — after 
he  had  become  a  great  financial  power,  as  when  he 
ate  his  bread  in  the  sweat  of  his  face.  Now  and 
then  he  seemed  to  forget  all  this.  It  were  more 
accurate,  to  say  that  he  pushed  it  aside,  in  the 
presence  of  higher  considerations.  When  his 
patriotism  or  his  national  pride  was  touched,  he 
did  not  let  it  stand  for  a  moment  in  the  way  of 
his  remembering  and  doing  what  became  him, 
with  a  largeness  of  purpose  and  freedom  of  hand 
which  showed  that  the  manhood  of  his  nature 
was  still  fresh  and  true.  He  threw  into  his 
labors  for  the  restoration  of  the  credit  of  Mary- 
land, his  soul  as  well  as  his  fortune,  and  refused 
any  compensation  but  the  pleasure  and  the  pride 
of  the  great  good  which  he  had  assisted  in  con- 
summating. He  stood  in  the  stead  of  his  whole 
country,  to  save  her  from  the  shame  of  official 
neglect  and  meanness,  when  the  Great  Exhibi- 
tion assembled  the  nations  together.  He  speeded 
the  brave  enterprise  of  Kane  on  its  mission  of 
science  and  humanity,  with  a  liberality  and  in  a 


37 

spirit  of  which  there  is  reason  to  believe  the 
whole  story  has  never  been  told.  Yet,  all  the 
while,  he,  himself,  remained  as  of  old,  modest, 
moderate,  economical  and  thrifty — living  in  lodg- 
ings, without  retinue  or  luxury  —  not  unwilling 
to  save  a  farthing,  if  it  came  in  his  way— willing 
to  go  out  of  his  way  rather  than  waste  or  even 
lose  one.  He  would  still  have  his  bargain, 
about  the  small  thing  as  well  as  the  great,  and 
he  would  make  men  stand  to  their  bargains  and 
give  him,  in  the  way  of  business,  the  fraction 
that  belonged  to  him.  Imposition  he  resented 
and  resisted,  no  matter  how  minute  its  form, 
and  he  would  protect  himself  from  it,  if  he  had 
to  cavil  for  his  ninth  part  of  a  hair.  A  friend 
who  knew  him  well  and  had  his  confidence,  has 
told  me,  that  one  day,  in  London,  after  an  inter- 
view in  which  they  had  discussed  together  his 
latest  and  most  bounteous  charities  —  when  he 
was  dispensing  millions,  with  a  stroke  of  his 
pen,  —  Mr.  Peabody  refused  to  take  a  cab,  and 
insisted  on  walking,  because  the  cabman  they 
had  called  wanted  more  than  his  lawful  fare. 
Thus,  beneath  the  surface  of  his  munificence,  his 
large  public  sympathies,  his  generous  patriotism, 
flowed  on  the  old  current  of  thrift,  economy,  close- 


38 

ness  and  money-loving.  Perhaps,  rather,  the  two 
streams  ran  side  by  side  in  the  same  bed,  like 
the  united  waters  of  the  Arve  and  Rhone  —  one 
earthy  and  bearing  the  stain  of  the  earth,  the 
other  bright  with  the  hue  of  the  sky. 

But  there  came  a  time,  at  last,  when  this  busy, 
accumulating  life,  with  its  seemingly  inconsistent 
traits  and  phases,  was  to  be  rounded  into  its  final 
development  and  true  expression.  The  elements 
of  character  which  appeared  so  much  in  contrast 
with  each  other  as  scarcely  to  be  reconciled,  were 
to  be  shown  working,  all  the  while,  harmoniously 
together.  The  man  of  calculation  and  acquisition 
—  almost  of  greed,  if  you  please  —  with  all  the 
habits  and  temptations  which  are  commonly  in- 
separable from  the  career  of  such,  was  of  a  sud- 
den to  rise  up  superior  to  them  all,  as  if  he  had 
never  known  them  —  a  head  and  shoulders  higher 
than  his  seeming  self.  The  man  whose  practical 
life  had  been  mainly  dedicated  to  saving,  was  to 
consecrate  the  rest  of  it  to  giving.  The  man  who 
loved  money  and  had  lived  in  the  pursuit  of  it, 
was  to  reach  that  point  —  almost  unattainable  by 
humanity — at  which  he  was  to  feel  and  say:  "I 
have  enough ! "  Such  phenomena  are  develop- 
ments,   not    changes.      If    Mr.   Peabody's   whole 


39 

heart  had  been  in  money  during  the  long  years 
when  he  was  "  gathering  gear,"  he  could  never,  in 
his  old  age,  have  shaken  off  the  golden  fetters.  The 
result  showed  which  had  been  master  and  which 
servant,  all  the  while.  The  fruit  proved  the  tree. 
And  yet  the  fruit  had  in  it  much  taste  of  the  soil 
in  which  the  tree  grew.  The  system,  the  care,  the 
prudence,  which  had  gathered  and  preserved  his 
wealth,  were  developed  as  well  in  its  appropria- 
tion. In  fact  he  made  benevolence  his  business 
and  dealt  with  it  as  such.  Its  merely  sympathetic 
guise  did  not  seem  to  attract  him.  At  all  events 
he  did  not  yield  greatly  to  its  attraction.  He 
did  not  grasp  at  the  near  pleasure  which  comes 
from  the  contact  of  present  charity  with  present 
suffering.  For  his  kindred,  he  provided  with 
generosity,  yet  without  prodigality.  His  aims 
were  wider  and  his  sight  went  farther  than 
would  have  been  consistent  with  bestowing  his 
wealth  on  individuals,  no  matter  how  much  he 
prized  them.  He  had  not  mounted  upon  a  high 
hill,  without  having  his  horizon  expanded.  He 
saw  humanity  in  the  distance  as  well  as  beside 
him,  and  saw  it  was  the  same  humanity,  far  off 
as  near.  Yet  his  extended  vision  rested,  where 
the  mists   began.      It  did  not  seek   to  penetrate 


40 

the  realms  of  unreality.  He  was  not  misled  by 
any  dream  of  reforming  the  world.  The  consci- 
ousness of  being  able  to  do  something  for  man- 
kind, and  the  desire  to  do  all  that  he  could,  did 
not  betray  him  into  the  folly  of  supposing  that 
he  could  do  every  thing.  He  was  as  far  from 
being  a  schemer  as  if  he  had  not  the  means  of 
scheming.  He  was  not  imaginative,  much  less 
fanciful.  He  knew  that  wealth  is  the  great  lever 
of  the  world  and  that  his  hand  was  on  it,  but  he 
had  no  notion  that,  with  it,  he  could  change  the 
course  of  the  planet.  He  had  seen  enough  of 
what  is  commonly  called  "  philanthropy,"  in  his 
generation,  and  had  no  taste  for  it.  Probably  he 
had  heard  of  Robespierre's  early  philippic  against 
capital  punishment,  and  knew  the  value  of  specu- 
lative benevolence.  He  therefore  did  not  lend 
himself  or  his  money  to  the  schemes  of  those 
excellent  but  somewhat  self-engrossed  and  not 
very  useful  people,  who  think  that  society  is  like 
Pandora's  box,  with  its  great  good  at  the  bottom, 
and  that  the  true  way  of  getting  at  this,  is  to 
turn  the  whole  upside  down.  The  solitary  blow, 
as  far  as  I  have  seen,  which  malice  has  aimed 
at  his  memory,  has  come  from  a  "  humanita- 
rian"   quarter  —  as   if    to   demonstrate   the  just- 


41 

ness  of  his  appreciation.  Looking  at  human 
nature,  in  the  light  of  his  own  experience,  and 
valuing  most  highly,  in  it,  that  healthy,  vigorous, 
independence  which  was  his  own  peculiar  trait, 
he  thought  he  could  help  his  fellow-creatures  best, 
by  teaching  them  to  help  themselves.  He  like- 
wise thought  that,  on  the  whole,  more  good  was 
to  be  done  by  striking  the  evils  of  humanity 
at  their  root,  than  by  providing  for  a  few  of 
their  victims.  These  were  the  simple  principles 
which  guided  the  application  of  his  bounty.  He 
persuaded  himself  that  cleanliness,  industry  and 
thrift  are  preventives  of  disease  and  poverty ; 
that  the  vices  which  fester  in  the  squalid  den 
have  no  place  in  the  decent  and  cheerful  home 
—  so,  instead  of  founding  hospitals  and  alms- 
houses, for  London  vagrants  and  paupers,  he 
oflfered  the  attraction  of  cheap  and  comfortable 
dwellings  to  those  who  are  willing  to  work.  He 
believed  that  education,  refining  occupations,  cul- 
tivated tastes,  the  study  and  the  love  of  art 
and  science  are,  next  to  religion,  the  great  safe- 
guards and  purifiers  of  society,  and  accordingly 
he  founded  institutes,  libraries,  professorships, 
boards  of  education,  to  difi^use  and  encourage 
them  among  his  countrymen.  In  all  this,  he 
6 


42 

followed  the  bent  of  his  life  —  investing  instead 
of  spending.  Nor  did  he  follow  the  example  of 
some  founders,  who  retain  control  over  their 
foundations  and  deceive  themselves  into  the  be- 
lief that  they  are  administering,  what  they  are 
only  unable  to  give  up  the  pleasure  of  handling. 
He  placed  all  that  he  gave  in  the  hands  of 
others — absolutely  and  without  reserve.  It  was 
his  honest  and  deliberate  judgment  that  the  best 
use  he  could  make  of  the  grain  he  had  garnered 
was  to  turn  it  into  seed,  not  food.  So  he  chose 
his  ground  and  planted,  in  the  faith  that  future 
seed-time  and  oft-returning  harvest  would  vindi- 
cate his  choice,  under  His  blessing  who  sends 
down  the  early  and  the  latter  rain. 

Was  this,  it  has  been  asked,  as  loving  a  use 
of  his  wealth,  as  if  he  had  flung  it  into  the  palms 
of  the  needy?  In  one  sense,  of  course,  it  was 
not.  In  another  and  a  loftier  one,  it  was  far 
more  so.  If  Mr.  Peabody  had  dedicated  his 
fortune  and  remaining  years  to  personal  alms- 
giving, and  had  sent  out  to  the  lanes  and  hedges 
for  the  weary  and  the  wretched:  if  he  had  chosen, 
for  his  almoners,  the  institutions  and  associations 
which  deal,  from  day  to  day,  with  every-day  suf- 
fering   and    sorrow,   he    would,   no    doubt,    have 


43 

swept  a  softer  and  a  gentler  chord  of  sympathy. 
We  are  flesh  to  each  other,  though  we  be  spirits 
before  God,  and  the  sweet 

"  music,  to  whose  tone 
The  common  pulse  of  man  keeps  time," 

answers  most  tenderly  the  touch  of  a  warm, 
human  hand.  Who  can  have  read  Lamb's  ex- 
quisite "  Complaint  of  the  Decay  of  Beggars," 
without  feeling  that  the  A^ery  shifts  and  impos- 
tures of  poverty  have  all  the  pathos  of  a  tribute 
to  the  daily  kindliness  and  goodness  which  walk 
among  the  poor?  With  his  fortune  and  his  pur- 
poses of  good,  if  Mr.  Peabody  had  chosen,  he 
might  have  had  crowds  follow  him_,  as  kings  were 
followed  when  men  thought  their  touch  would 
heal.  And  few  men,  with  his  heart,  and  no 
man,  with  less  high  resolves  than  his,  could 
have  resisted  so  egregious  a  temptation.  Nor, 
indeed,  would  it  have  been  necessary  he  should 
do  so,  if  all  men  were  prepared,  as  he  was,  to 
give  according  to  their  means.  It  is  the  lack  of 
such  a  disposition,  in  the  mass  of  us,  which  calls 
on  wise  benevolence  to  stay  its  hand,  and  con- 
centrate and  organize  its  charities.  If  we  were, 
to  one  another,  all  that  we  are  commanded  and 


44 

ought  to  be,  large  fortunes  would  rarely  be 
gathered  and  eleemosynary  foundations  would  be 
superfluous.  If  every  man  did  really  look  upon 
his  neighbor  as  his  brother,  or  love  him  as  him- 
self, the  circle  of  charity  would  belt,  a  happy 
world,  and  every  private  life  would  be  an  insti- 
tution of  beneficence.  Why  this  great  scheme  of 
Christianity  is  not  wrought  out  yet,  or  when  it 
will  be,  we  may  not  know.  Society  therefore 
must  deal  with  its  problems  as  it  finds  them, 
and  think  for  to-morrow  as  well  as  for  to-day. 
In  fact,  the  very  application  of  large  private 
wealth  to  present  purposes  of  charity,  has  its  ill 
effects  as  well  as  good.  There  is  a  class  of 
moral  and  most  respectable  people,  who  pay, 
with  absolute  punctuality,  all  the  debts  that  can 
be  recovered  from  them  by  law,  but  who  do  not 
recognize,  with  equal  alacrity,  the  obligation  of 
any  others.  They  think  they  have  done  all  that 
they  are  called  to  do,  in  behalf  of  education  and 
charity,  when  they  have  paid  the  taxes  levied  for 
schools  and  almshouses.  They  are  typified  by 
Jeremy  Taylor's  "  man  of  ordinary  piety,"  whom 
he  likens  to  "  Gideon's  fleece,  wet  in  its  own 
locks,  but  it  could  not  water  a  poor  man's  gar- 
den."     To  these  worthy  citizens,  the  benevolence 


45 

of  others  appears  only  to  come  in  aid  of  muni- 
cipal contribution,  and  the  larger  its  abundance 
the  greater  the  justification  they  find  in  it  for 
their  unwillingness  to  give  to  any  but  the  public 
collector,  or  to  give  to  him  any  more  than  they 
can  help.  Why  should  they  trouble  themselves 
to  take  in  the  poor  estrays  of  humanity,  when 
there  is  room  enough  for  them  in  the  common 
pound  which  the  public  or  some  one  else  has 
provided  ?  It  is  not  worth  while  for  society  to 
shut  its  eyes  to  these  and  kindred  considerations, 
and  the  wise  and  good  who  undertake  to  be 
its  benefactors,  must  act  for  the  world  as  it  is, 
and  subordinate  sentiment  to  prudence  and  duty. 
They  must  look  to  the  future  and  mankind,  not 
less  than  to  the  present  and  the  individual.  And 
it  is  in  this  sense  that  their  charity  is  the  noblest 
of  all,  because  it  is  the  largest  of  all,  in  its 
scope.  It  goes  even  beyond  the  love  which  has 
been  beautifully  described,  as  "  not  a  spasm  but  a 
life."  It  imitates,  with  reverence,  as  far  as  man 
may  imitate,  the  workings  of  that  Supreme  Bene- 
ficence, which  guides  by  large  rules  the  universal 
plan  of  its  goodness.  ]N"or  does  it  recognize,  the 
less,  its  relation  to  humanity.  The  human  sym- 
pathy which  wins  a  blessing   from  the  way-side 


46 

beggar  is  none  the  less  heartfelt  and  human, 
surely,  because  it  is  expanded  in  purpose  and 
through  time,  and  is  directed  and  informed  by 
system  and  intelligence. 

And  here  a  thought  presents  itself,  on  which  I 
cannot  pause  to  dwell,  but  which  appears  not  alto- 
gether barren  of  suggestion.  Enormous  capital  is 
one  of  the  phenomena  —  perhaps  the  mightiest 
engine  —  of  our  civilization.  Vast  fortunes  are 
in  many  hands,  private  as  well  as  corporate,  and 
vastness  is  the  characteristic  of  all  enterprises, 
good  and  bad.  Side  by  side  with  this  increase 
in  wealth  and  the  number  of  those  who  control  it, 
is  another  phenomenon,  almost  as  singular  under 
the  circumstances.  I  mean  the  great  and  general 
diffusion  of  competence  and  comfort,  among  the 
multitudes  who  are  not  rich  —  among  those  who 
labor  with  their  hands,  as  well  as  those  of  more 
liberal  pursuits.  In  this  state  of  society,  and 
regarding,  comprehensively,  the  interests  as  well 
as  the  resources  of  the  community  at  large,  it 
is  well  worth  considering,  whether  the  field  of 
benevolence,  proper  to  be  cultivated  by  the  very 
rich,  is  not  precisely  that  which  Mr.  Peabody 
selected,  leaving  the  more  personal  and  minor 
charities  to  minor  fortunes.  The  distribution 
seems  a  wise  one,  if  benevolence  be  not  ashamed 


47 

to  learn  from  greed.  If  concentration  of  capital, 
which  is  power,  has  been  found  to  serve  the  pur- 
poses of  gain,  it  cannot  less  promote  the  nobler 
industries  of  loving-kindness. 

But  —  whether  the  disposition  which  Mr.  Pea- 
body  made  of  his  wealth  was  more  or  less  genial 
or  wise,  has  nothing  to  do  with  the  spirit  in 
which  he  parted  with  it.  He  dedicated  it  to  ends 
which  he  honestly  thought  good.  He  directed  it 
wisely,  according  to  his  best  wisdom.  Whether 
he  was  right,  or  was  mistaken,  in  his  modes  or 
his  ends,  his  riches  at  all  events  went  away  from 
himself.  In  the  ripe  maturity  of  a  yet  vigor- 
ous life  and  the  unembarrassed  control  of  a 
colossal  fortune ;  at  an  age  when  the  love  of 
money  is  apt  to  seize  upon  those  who  have  loved 
it  least,  and  becomes  the  very  existence  of  those 
who  have  always  loved  it;  when,  if  men  pause 
from  struggling,  it  is  to  enjoy  in  tranquility 
the  fruits  of  struggle;  honored;  respected;  with 
every  avenue  accessible  to  his  ambition  which 
popularity  could  open  and  every  prize  at  his 
command  which  wealth  could  buy  —  (and  what 
can  it  not  buy?) — he  deliberately  converted  his 
remaining  years  into  a  season  of  stewardship  and 
surrendered  himself  to  his  kind.  In  the  simple 
and  touching  language  of  the  epitaph  which  com- 


•48 

memorates  the  founder  of  the  Charity  Hospital 
at  Seville:  "He  gave  to  them  whatever  he  had." 
There  is  no  record,  that  I  know,  of  any  man 
who,  in  like  case,  did  likewise.  Monarchs,  it  is 
true,  have  abdicated  thrones,  in  the  fulness  of 
power.  But,  for  the  most  part,  it  was  a  retire- 
ment from  self,  in  one  form,  into  self  in  another. 
Satiety  of  pomp  and  pleasure  —  repentance  of 
misdeeds  —  a  weariness  of  strife  and  longing  for 
repose  —  made  them  fling  down  their  sceptres  in 
the  reaction  of  despair.  The  jaded  soul  yearned 
for  deliverance  and  rushed  into  the  shades  for 
refu2:e.  Those  who  have  followed  Charles  into 
the  cloisters  of  Yuste,  will  remember  how  the 
phantoms  of  empire  still  haunted  the  devotee  at 
the  altar.  But  the  love  of  money  is  more  ab- 
sorbing and  more  abiding  than  even  the  love  of 
power.  Avarice  may  not  always  be  a  worse  pas- 
sion than  ambition,  but  it  is  a  lower  one.  Its 
poison  may  not  be  the  deadliest  to  the  moral 
nature,  but  it  is  as  deadly  as  any  and  is  the 
most  penetrating  and  pervading  of  all.  Ambi- 
tion is  consistent  with  the  noblest  and  most 
generous  aims.  Sometimes  indeed  'tis  but  their 
splendid  herald.  Avarice  is  selfish  only,  and  its 
selfishness  is  all  meanness.      It  not  only  panders 


49 

to  self,  but  to  all  the  basenesses  of  self-seeking. 
It  dwarfs  the  intellect;  chokes  every  generous 
impulse;  rots  every  seed  of  human  feeling;  toler- 
ates no  passion  even,  that  is  not,  like  itself,  a 
lust.  It  breaks,  in  fine,  all  links  but  one,  and 
that  the  foulest,  between  the  miser  and  his 
species.  What  avarice  is,  the  pursuit  of  money 
tends  to.  The  monks  of  St.  Francis  expressed 
a  great  truth  (though  in  what  Bacon  calls  a 
"  friarly "  way)  when  they  warned  Rienzi  that 
money  w^as  not  to  be  trusted.  "  The  purse  of 
our  Lord,"  they  told  him,  "was  committed  to 
Judas.  If  it  had  been  meant  as  a  good  thing,  it 
would  have  been  entrusted  to  St.  Peter."  Deal- 
ing with  money — thinking  of  it,  turning  it  over 
—  as  an  exclusive  occupation,  men  become  as  if 
under  a  demoniacal  possession.  And  no  fiend 
more  fearful  ever  entered  human  soul,  than  the 
vice  which  turns  hopes  and  affections,  desires 
and  aspirations,  all,  into  self.  How  grandly 
Tennyson  has  taught  us,  lately,  in  "  The  Holy 
Grail,"  that  all  the  heroism  which  ever  sought 
earthly  good  or  heavenly  reward  is  powerless  to 
win  them,  unless  self  be  immolated  on  the  altar. 

"  Galabad,  when  he  heard  of  Merlin's  doom, 
Cried  'If  I  lose  myself,  I  save  myself.'" 


60 

Search  the  annals  of  men  who  have  honored 
and  blessed  their  race:  look  through  the  daily 
walks  of  lofty  and  of  common  life,  of  public  ser- 
vice and  of  private  toil;  go  round  the  circles  of 
domestic  love  and  happiness ;  and,  everywhere, 
you  find  that  the  secret  of  one  man's  being  held 
better  than  another,  and  more  loved  and  worthy 
of  love  than  another;  the  mainspring  of  men's 
permanent  influence  and  real  power  over  other 
men  and  crowds  of  men ;  is  their  capacity  to  with- 
draw themselves  from  self — to  bestow  heart  and 
soul  upon  something  outside  of  themselves ;  upon 
some  other  living  creature ;  on  friends,  or  coun- 
try, or  on  all  the  creatures  of  God.  Analyze 
every  good  thing  we  do,  from  great  to  small,  and 
that  will  turn  out  to  be  its  essence.  Self-sacri- 
fice, in  all  its  shapes,  is  made  up  of  it.  It  speaks 
in  a  child's  confession  of  a  fault,  and  it  flushed 
the  cheek  of  Curtius  as  he  leapt  into  the  gulf. 
Patriotism  is  vapid  hypocrisy,  and  the  battle-field 
murder,  without  it.  The  divine  blood  which  the 
Knights  of  Arthur  sought  after,  with  their  swords 
and  prayers,  was  shed  as  a  type  of  it  and  to  be 
a  lesson  of  it,  from  on  High,  forever.  And  it  is 
to  this  especial  virtue,  the  root  of  all  virtues  and 
of   all    true    manhood,   that   money-hunting    and 


61 

money-handling  are  essentially  hostile  and  per- 
petually fatal.  The  hand  goes  on  grasping  and 
holding  fast,  till  it  parts  with  all  power  but  that 
of  grasping  and  holding.  The  heart  and  the  mus- 
cles, alike,  lose  every  function  but  that  of  contract- 
ing. When  old  Strahan,  the  printer,  recalled  to 
Dr.  Johnson  a  remark  of  his,  that  "there  are  few 
ways  in  which  a  man  can  be  more  innocently  em- 
ployed than  in  getting  money,"  he  added,  and 
with  entire  unconsciousness  of  the  force  of  what 
he  was  saying,  that  "the  more  one  thinks  of 
this,  the  juster  it  will  appear."  Johnson,  whose 
experience  in  money-getting  certainly  entitled  his 
opinion  to  great  weight,  and  who  fully  appreci- 
ated the  justice  of  his  own  observations,  appeared 
to  think  so  too.  And,  in  fact,  it  is  the  thinking 
of  it  which  perverts  the  judgment  and  corrupts 
the  heart.  The  more  one  thinks  of  it,  the  more 
he  yields  to  it,  and  the  less  he  is  able  to  think 
of  anything  besides.  Thus  is  it  that  we  see,  so 
often,  the  large  designs,  the  long-considered 
plans,  of  men  whose  natures  in  themselves  are 
kindly,  made  futile — sometimes  simply  despicable 
—  by  their  incapacity  to  loose  their  hold  upon 
the  merest  superfluities  of  fortune.  Thus  is  it, 
that  benevolence  so  often  sinks  into  that  "painted 
sepulchre  of  alms,"  a    testamentary  bequest,  and 


62 

only    the   relaxation   of    the    dying   moment    can 
open  the  clutching  fingers. 

It  is  this  which  I  promised  to  consider,  when 
I  spoke,  a  little  while  ago,  of  the  single  and 
melancholy  circumstance,  which  made  it  other- 
wise  than  strange  that  rich  men  did  not  find, 
in  giving,  the  highest  pleasure  and  privilege  of 
wealth.  And  it  is  because  George  Peabody  was 
above  all  this:  because  he  made  himself  a  rich 
man,  from  poverty,  without  being  corrupted  by 
great  riches:  because  the  soil  of  his  nature  was 
so  generous,  that  the  very  root  of  all  evil  sprang 
up  to  immeasurable  good  in  it — it  is  for  this  that 
the  world  reverences  him  to-day.  Not  merely 
for  the  good  he  did,  since  that  depended  on 
his  means  and  opportunities,  and  must  depend, 
to  a  great  extent,  upon  others  hereafter — not  for 
the  magnitude  of  his  offerings,  for  his  wealth 
was  but  the  platform  which  lifted  his  virtues  into 
sight — but  because  he  furnished  an  example,  never 
known  in  the  world  before,  of  a  man  who  united 
all  the  love  of  money,  which  makes  men  richest 
and  most  men  meanest,  with  all  the  scorn  of  its 
dominion  which  burns  in  the  noblest  soul.  To 
live  a  life  of  painful  and  painstaking  acquisition: 
to  wrestle  with  covetousness,  while  climbing  from 


53 

early  destitution  to  the  height  of  what  a  covetous 
heart  could  desire;  and  then  to  put  his  foot  upon 
his  gains  and  their  temptations,  like  a  gladiator 
on  a  wild  beast  vanquished — this  is  the  spectacle 
which  has  made  the  world's  amphitheatre  tumul- 
tuous. Nor  is  the  shout  for  the  moment  only, 
to  be  lost  in  the  common  noise.  So  long  as  men 
shall  wrestle  in  the  same  arena  and  other  men 
look  on,  it  shall  ring  in  the  ears  of  the  wrestlers 
and  nerve  them  to  win  their  fight.  There  is  no 
death  in  victories  like  this,  for  such  deeds  of  our 
better  nature  partake  of  its  own  immortality. 
Men  wonder,  after  long  centuries,  at  the  Diocle- 
tians  and  the  Amuraths,  who  flung  away  the 
purple  when  it  was  the  only  symbol  of  power, 
and  now  that  money  is  king  over  kings,  they 
must  remember,  with  greater  admiration,  the  rich 
man  who  discrowned  himself.  In  proportion  to 
their  admiration  are  the  greatness  and  the  lesson 
of  his  example. 

And  let  us  not  forget  how  much  the  simple 
dignity  of  that  example  has  added  to  its  lustre. 
We  are  familiar  with  the  honors  which  were  ten- 
dered to  Mr.  Peabody  —  the  tributes  of  national 
gratitude  and  popular  affection  and  respect,  which 
crowded,  as  it  were,  around  him,  in  his  later  days. 


54 

He  knew  their  value  fully — no  man  better.  He 
knew  it  too  well  to  be  indifferent  to  them  and  he 
was  too  much  a  man  to  aifect  indifference.  He 
felt  that  the  kind,  the  almost  affectionate  words 
which  the  Queen  of  Great  Britain  addressed  to 
him,  were  not  merely  the  generous  utterance  of 
her  own  womanly  and  gentle  thought,  but  ex- 
pressed the  feeling  and  opinion  of  a  great  and 
manly  people,  whose  applause  is  almost  fame. 
He  cherished  the  sympathy  and  praise  of  his 
own  country,  as  a  man  listens  to  the  blessing 
of  his  mother.  He  loved  approbation,  like  most 
men  who  deserve  it,  and  its  expression  was  the 
more  welcome  to  him,  because  he  knew  it  was 
deserved.  Yet  he  was  shaken  from  his  poise  by 
neither  praise,  nor  gratitude,  nor  honors.  He  was 
unchanged,  as  if  his  right  hand  had  not  heard 
of  the  doings  of  his  left.  He  passed  under  the 
arches,  without  a  thrill  or  a  gesture  of  triumph, 
and  his  life,  after,  was  as  his  life  before.  In  all 
that  he  has  made  us  proud  to  remember,  we  can 
remember  nothing  more  proudly  than  this. 
To  such  a  life  there  could  be  but  a  fitting  close: 

"  His  'twelve,  long  sunny  hours 
Bright  to  the  edge  of  darkness ;  then  the  calm 
Repose  of  twilight  and  a  crown  of  stars  I  " 


06 

Having  thus  given,  imperfectly  I  know,  but  to 
the  best  of  my  ability  and  with  all  the  fulness 
which  the  occasion  will  permit,  my  honest  though 
humble  judgment  of  the  life  and  character  of  Mr. 
Peabody  and  the  great  moral  taught  by  his  career 
—  having  striven,  above  all  things,  to  speak  of  him 
nothing  but  the  truth  —  I  should  feel  that  my  duty 
was  discharged,  if  I  stood  anywhere  save  where 
I  am.  But  here,  in  Baltimore,  upon  the  soil  of 
Maryland,  in  the  presence  of  so  many  of  her  citi- 
zens and  their  official  representatives  assembled 
in  his  honor;  surrounded,  on  his  birth -day,  by  his 
old  companions,  by  the  memories  of  his  devotion 
and  the  tokens  of  his  bounty :  I  feel  that  there  is 
something  more,  which  should  not  go  unsaid.  I 
care  not  to  speak  of  the  resources  he  placed  at 
our  disposal,  for  the  education  and  improvement 
of  our  people,  nor  even  of  the  signal  service  he 
rendered  to  the  State  in  the  days  of  her  financial 
weakness  and  humiliation.  What  we  owe  him, 
for  these  things,  need  not  be  told.  Our  sense  of 
their  value  is  written,  in  grateful  words,  on  our 
Legislative  records,  and  they  are  part  of  our 
history,  as  they  will  be  of  our  remembrance,  for 
ever.  But  the  good- will  which  prompted  them, 
and  which  cannot  be  measured,  should  not  pass 


56 

unacknowledged  to-day.  We  are  proud  of  that 
confidence  in  the  rectitude  of  our  people,  which 
made  him  our  champion,  before  the  world,  when 
some  of  the  best  and  wisest  among  ourselves  had 
fallen  away  from  their  faith  in  our  honor.  We 
rejoice,  for  his  sake  not  less  than  for  our  own, 
to  have  proven  that  his  confidence  was  just  —  to 
have  aided  him  in  vindicating  the  lofty  principle 
of  his  life,  that  to  think  well  of  mankind  is 
wisdom.  We  recall,  with  tenderness, .  the  attach- 
ment he  felt  for  our  City,  as  "  the  home  of  his 
early  business,  and  the  scene  of  his  youthful 
exertions."  We  give  him  back  the  sympathies 
which  distance  and  time  could  not  w^eaken  in  his 
bosom  nor  prosperity  efface.  We  cherish  the 
feeling  that  he  was  one  of  ourselves — that  if  he 
had  given  away  his  heart,  as  dying  kings  give 
theirs,  he  would  have  sent  it  to  be  buried  among 
us.  We  cling  to  his  fame  and  his  example  as 
part  of  our  own  heritage,  and  to  the  brotherhood 
which  was  between  us,  as  even  dearer  than  his 
fame. 

But  other  considerations,  belonging  to  this  place 
and  this  occasion,  press  upon  me  yet  more  en- 
grossingly  than  these.  There  is  an  Eastern  story, 
of   a   man   who   could    bear   a    thousand    pounds 


67 

weight,  but  a  single  hard  word  was  too  heavy 
for  him ;  and  there  are  times  when  to  hush  that 
word  and  say  a  single  one  of  kindness,  is  the 
grandest  act  and  the  richest  gift  of  charity. 
Upon  this  very  spot  —  it  seems  but  yesterday, 
though  years  and  death  have  come  between  — 
I  heard  Mr.  Peabody  pour  out  his  heart,  on  the 
occasion  to  which  I  alluded  in  my  opening.  How 
what  he  said  affected  others,  they  know  best,  but 
thinking  and  believing  of  him,  truly,  all  that  I 
have  sought  to  say,  I  own  that  I  have  felt  and 
said  it  twice  as  warmly,  in  memory  of  that  day. 
He  had  lived  among  us,  a  T^orthern  man  among 
a  Southern  people,  loving  and  beloved.  He  had 
left  us  happy  and  united  —  he  returned  to  find  us 
sullen  and  divided.  The  wounds  of  our  then 
recent  civil  strife  were  yet  unhealed.  Political 
antagonisms,  social  resentments  —  personal  and 
even  domestic  animosities  —  were  still  rankling, 
and  it  was  next  to  impossible  for  any  man  to 
speak,  without  oifence  to  some  one  whom  he 
cared  for,  of  what  brooded  so  ominously  over 
the  hearts  of  so  many.  But  Mr.  Peabody  felt 
that  his  opportunity  was  great  for  good,  and  that 
opportunity  made  duty.  He  took  the  chances  of 
oifence,  and  spoke  what  was  in  him,  like  a  man. 
8 


58 

While  he  proclaimed  that  his  sympathies  had 
been  always  with  the  Union  and  his  hopes  with 
the  success  of  its  armies,  he  dared  to  proclaim, 
at  the  same  time,  his  respect  for  the  integrity 
and  manhood  of  the  vanquished.  He  traced  and 
recognized,  with  the  philosophy  of  truth  and 
kindness,  the  influence  of  birth  and  education 
on  opinion.  He  braved  the  censure  of  zealots, 
on  the  one  side,  by  dealing  with  the  convictions 
of  the  South  as  error  —  he  braved  it  equally, 
upon  the  other,  by  a  manly  protest  against  con- 
founding such  error  with  crime. 

"  Never,  therefore,"  he  said,  "  during  the  war 
or  since,  have  I  permitted  the  contest,  or  any 
passions  engendered  by  it,  to  interfere  with  the 
social  relations  and  warm  friendships  which  I 
had  formed  for  a  very  large  number  of  the  peo- 
ple of  the  South.  *  *  *  *  ^^id  now,  after 
the  lapse  of  these  eventful  years,  I  am  more 
deeply,  more  earnestly,  more  painfully  convinced 
than  ever,  of  our  need  of  mutual  forbearance  and 
conciliation,  of  Christian  charity  and  forgiveness, 
of  united  eflPbrt  to  bind  up  the  fresh  and  broken 
wounds  of  the  nation." 

I  know  of  more  than  one  estrangement  which 
those  noble  words  of  his  reconciled.      I  know  of 


59 

more  than  one  bosom,  in  which  they  dried  the 
waters  of  bitterness  —  more  than  one  fountain  of 
tears,  long  sealed,  which  they  opened.  Time  will 
be,  when  men  shall  wonder  that  such  counsels 
could  ever  have  been  needed,  and  more  will  be 
the  marvel  that  even  passion  did  not  blush  to 
deny  them  welcome.  Here,  where  he  uttered 
them,  and  standing  almost  in  his  presence,  I  do 
them  grateful  reverence.  And  when  I  think  how 
the  charity  from  which  they  sprang  went  out 
into  the  desolate  places  of  war;  how  it  poured 
its  treasures  into  kindly  and  trusted  hands,  that 
they  might  minister  to  the  higher  needs  of  our 
crushed  and  helpless  kindred ;  I  seem  to  see  a 
light  around  the  good  man's  image,  more  radi- 
ant, tenfold,  than  the  sunbeam  which  flashed 
across  the  Abbey  to  his  pall.  These  crowning 
acts  of  his  whole  life  —  its 

"bright  consummate  flower — " 

gave  all  that  was  needed,  of  fulness,  to  its  lesson, 
and  all  that  could  be  added,  of  greatness  and 
beauty,  to  his  example.  He  had  taught  us  that 
brilliant  qualities  of  intellect  or  character  are  not 
indispensable  to  make  men  useful  or  honored,  and 
that  the  real   benefactors  of  their   kind   are   not 


^-Cd^^ZZ 


60 

they  at  the  sound  of  whose  name  the  world 
stands  still.  He  had  shown  how  the  humble  and 
the  poor  may  lift  themselves  among  the  great 
ones  of  the  earth,  by  industry,  integrity  and  in- 
dependence, and  how  the  rich  may  keep  above 
their  riches,  by  clinging  to  the  treasure  of  their 
souls.  He  had  taught  how  the  simple  dignity 
of  manhood  may  rise  superior  to  rank  and  sta- 
tion and  that  all  the  grandeur  of  power  lies  only 
in  its  uses.  He  had  ennobled  wealth  by  his 
touch,  as  knights  give  knighthood,  and  estab- 
lished as  the  canon  of  its  primogeniture  that 
humanity  is  its  first-born.  It  was  only  left  for 
him  to  show  to  his  own  brethren,  that  men  may 
love  their  country  without  intolerance,  may  fight 
her  battles  without  hate,  and  be  conquerors 
without  revenge. 

The  blessing  of  the  peace-makers  be  upon  him 
and  his  memorv ! 


tortit  yitSRenr,  printer,  baltimorc. 


